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VAN ZWEDEN CONDUCTS MENDELSSOHN

New York Philharmonic Inon Barnatan, piano - Christopher Martin, trumpet
Orchestral Series
Friday, July 19, 2024 at 6pm Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

Van Zweden returns to lead the Philharmonic in two contrasting Russian works: Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 and Shostakovich’s Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, featuring Principal Trumpet Christopher Martin and pianist Inon Barnatan. Concluding the program is Mendelssohn’s cherished Symphony No. 3.

Did you know?

Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, inspired a visit to that land, sounds ever-so-Scottish to us, but Robert Schumann, wearing his critic’s hat, somehow got this confused with Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony and found the Scottish to harbor “melodies sung in lovely Italy.” Oops.

Featured Artists

Jaap van Zweden

conductor

Christopher Martin

trumpet

Inon Barnatan

piano

Program Highlights

  • Jaap van Zweden, conductor  
  • Christopher Martin, trumpet 
  • Inon Barnatan, piano

PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 1, Classical 

SHOSTAKOVICH Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and Strings 

MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3, Scottish

Program Notes

Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical (1916-17)

(14 minutes)

SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)

Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical
     Allegro
     Larghetto
     Gavotte: Non troppo allegro
     Finale: Molto vivace

Sergei Prokofiev’s conducting professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Nikolai Tcherepnin, adored the music of the Classical era and encouraged his students to immerse themselves in the works of Haydn and Mozart to see what inspiration they could extract for their own compositions. A happy result was Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, meticulously worked out in 1916-17 and premiered the following year, just before the composer left his politically explosive homeland for a very extended residence in America and Western Europe. (The year of the Classical Symphony’s completion was also the year of the Czar’s abdication, the October Revolution, and Lenin’s ascent to political power.)

Prokofiev later explained that his intent was to translate musical Classicism into a specifically 20th-century idiom. “It seemed to me that if Haydn had lived into this era, he would have kept his own style while absorbing things from what was new in music. That’s the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the Classical style.” His decision to give the work its familiar nickname seems to have derived from two impetuses: on one hand, it is a logical reference to its sources; on the other, the composer explained that he “secretly hoped that in the course of time it might itself turn out to be a classic.”

This was the first major work that Prokofiev, a superb pianist, composed without the intermediary of the keyboard. “I was intrigued with the idea of writing an entire symphonic piece without the piano,” he recounted. “A composition written this way would probably have more transparent orchestral colors.” The Classical Symphony is transparent indeed, as transparent as a fine diamond. Set in the “sunny” 18th-century key of D major, it employs the forces of a Classical orchestra to crisp effect.

Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, Op. 35 (1933)

(21 minutes)

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-75)

Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, Op. 35
     Allegretto
     Lento
     Moderato
     Allegro con brio
(Played without pause)

Shostakovich composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in the aftermath of the censure he received from Soviet apparatchiks for his opera The Nose following its staging in early 1930. Stung by the attack, he realized that he had no option but to atone, or at least behave in a way that could be interpreted as such; but his efforts seemed only to make things worse. During this period of turmoil he all but ceased appearing as a concert pianist, which had been an essential strand of his earlier musical persona, but in early 1933 he began focusing on the keyboard again, at first producing a series of Twenty-four Preludes (Op. 34) and, immediately on the heels of that cycle, his First Piano Concerto. At about this time he told a friend that he was considering giving up composing and returning to his career as a concert pianist, an understandable temptation in light of the problems his compositions had caused him. Fortunately, the Concerto proved to be wildly successful and quickly entered the repertoire as a must-play piece.

Shostakovich wisely refused to comment on the “inner meaning” of this work—not that he wasn’t asked. This left the delighted listeners to simply revel in its optimistic bonhomie and its understated references to Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Mahler, and various styles of popular music; and it left the critics without anything to attack, for a change. He did explain that when he started working on this piece he envisioned it as a trumpet concerto, that he gradually began imagining a supporting piano part, and that by the time he finished, the instruments’ roles had become reversed, making this a piano concerto with an unusually prominent role for the trumpet.

INTERMISSION

(18 minutes)

Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, Scottish

(38 minutes)

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809-1847)

Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, Scottish
     Andante con moto — Allegro un poco
        agitato
     Vivace non troppo
     Adagio
     Allegro vivacissimo — Allegro maestoso
        assai

Although Felix Mendelssohn did not begin focusing on his Symphony No. 3 until 1840, its genealogy dates back to 1829, when he made his first trip to the British Isles—his first of ten, it would turn out. After taking in the cultural swirl of London, he and a friend left for three weeks in Scotland, which Mendelssohn documented through drawings and sketches: Edinburgh, the Highlands, the islands of Staffa and Iona, Glasgow. On July 30, he visited the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh and wrote to his family in Berlin: “In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved. ... The chapel close to it is now roofless, grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything round is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I have found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.” Then he jotted down 16 measures of music in piano score with notations indicating instrumentation; and a decade later they would indeed grow into the Andante con moto introduction of the Scottish Symphony. Mendelssohn does not draw on Scottish melodies in his score, but listeners have been happy to hear its flavor as authentically Scottish in spirit, replete with pentatonic melodies, bass drones (suggesting bagpipes), parallel progressions of open-spaced chords, and sparkling rhythms (including so-called “Scotch snaps,” consisting of a quick note on an accented beat followed by a longer note on an unaccented one). The Caledonian association will be inalienable to many audiences today thanks to the work’s use in George Balanchine’s kilted ballet setting, under the title Scotch Symphony, a staple in the dance repertoire since it was unveiled in 1952.